Organ Pipe National Monument (7th Dec)

Organ Pipe - funny name, right?

Yeah, we thought so too.

After we left Joshua Tree (or The Joshster as he is more often called in the shacks and shanties of old Nature-stoners) we hit a fat lot of highway - desert style. Twas a strange introduction. We flew through a wild mixture of AM and FM radio bands, picking up such diversity as the typical evangelists (we would hear a lot of these), Spanish radio (two stations at all times. Sometimes, all we could pick up was Spanish radio... so many trumpets), a bunch of country stations, a couple of decent rock-ish stations, a fucking awesome rock station (that unfortunately could only accommodate us for about 50 miles), some fat chauvinistic guy whose reason d'etre was to yell out at people who disagreed with him, and the 'Randi Rhodes Show' - who lightened up our day with her discussion on Meth Labs, and the (apparent) many exploding Meth Labs in New York City (I think the one in question was in a penthouse). Randi also offered us our favourite line of the day, regarding former US permanent representative to the UN, John Bolton, "I just want him to admit to the world that he is a horrible person."

* In an interesting sidenote, while trying to remember John Bolton's name a few weeks ago, I typed "US representative to UN" into Google. The responses weren't immediately helpful so I tried another approach: "US representative to UN republican asshole" and bingo bango - John Bolton's name started appearing like a rash.

We stopped in at a truck stop and ate some Chesters - a horrible Red Rooter meets KFC derivative, but instead of cooking the chicken in herbs and spices and oil, they must cook them in the liquified remains of dead and dying chickens. We kind of felt sick afterwards. Each eating booth was equipped with a payphone, and in one of the booths nearby there was a sickly-looking middle-aged couple, the woman of which was calling her mum having missed her sister's birthday because they couldn't afford the phonecall and they've moved to a new trailer park and things might be ok and they should have enough food stamps but she probably can't afford another phone call for a while.
Needless to say, Chesters was a depressing lunch spot.

Nearer the end of the day we passed through a truck stop that was more of a truck town, or perhaps even Truckton, although I was under the impression that Truckton was a Truck built from the remnants of an alien spacecraft that crashed in the desert and was brought to life by unexplainable solar activity cascading down from the Milky Way's creamy nougat centre - having said that, the story of Truckton that I know and just related came from the 80s so it is conceivable that Truckton grew weary with the world as an alien-craft-bastard-truck and used its gnarly and unquantifiable solar energy powers to transform itself once more, this time into a town. So we may or may not have come across the malcontent sentient being known as Truckton, it's difficult to say. Regardless, it/he was at the crossroads of two highways and consisted of four competing gas stations, a couple of motels, a couple of small take-out places attached to the gas stations, a formidable army of trucks (in the hundreds) parked or filling up, and a single cactus shop.
Twenty seconds and it was gone, faded away into the distance.

We finally arrived at Organ Pipe NM just after dusk, having to set up camp under the headlights of the car. In the morning we checked out the Rangers Station and danced a little jig before setting out on a small drive recommended by the Rangers.

The drive was shit-hot, both in the context of the heat and in that it was excellent. Of course, after icy, windy and crispy wintry nights, it was good to be back in shorts with the windows rolled down and working on a good sweat. The one-way loop was about an hour long, and unspoilt by modern man but for the winding dirt track, and another less winding, but still very much overgrown dirt path that is the old highway to Mexico.
















Ok, so there was also the occasional shelter and information post. Regardless, it was an hour well spent, though an experience that does not translate well into the telling. It was also a good chance for P to get behind the wheel and give B a bit of a much-appreciated break.


On our way out of the park we were stopped by Border Patrol (we were very close to Mexico - in fact the photo below is of the old 'highway' to Mexico). The car in front of us was getting the third degree from the Border Patrollians and Pedro in the back seat was getting really nervous. Finally when it was our turn, Patrolian #1 asked where we'd been.
B: Ahhh, the Organ ..Cactus... Park Place?
P1: Can you pop your trunk
Normally B could pop the trunk, but there seemed to be some kind of problem (the car was running) but after a couple of minutes of fussing and a feuding we finally got that bugger open. He took one look at our 'trunk' and sent us on our way, which is curious because our 'trunk' was absolutely chockas with boxes of food and wood and shit and our backseat was much the same. We had fun but Pedro and Miguel were a bit sweaty when we let them out. They thanked us and shot their pistollas into the air with as much stereotype as they could manage before running madly into the supposed freedom of the Unites States. Those guys were crazy.

Joshua Tree NP (5-6 Dec 06)

We had set the alarm early enough to catch the free motel breakfast and woke up to the extreme desert heat, the cause of which was an overzealous hand on the heater controls of the air conditioning the previous night/morning - it was so freaking hot in the room that it was actually a relief to step out into the hot desert sun. We managed to score a pile of breakfast, catch some more Zzzzz, and Pe cleaned herself up as B set about clogging the toilet enough to consider it completely and utterly stuffed and make a break for it before we encountered the wrath of the (presumably) severely underpaid cleaning staff.

The night had consumed many many miles of highway and we found ourselves in very different terrain. We were in south California, and the morning had turned the vague shadows and neon lights into desert, windfarms, highways, more trucks and steakhouses.


The tremendous upside of the long, long night was that we were only about one hour from Joshua Tree National Park. Now, B was a bit skeptical about the raw-interest value in seeing a National Park dedicated to a single type of tree. Sure, it might appeal to the hardest of hardcore nature lovers or U2 fans, but what did the park have to offer gentle people like us?

The answer was plenty. The JT is a bit of a strange old plant, looking a bit like the mutant offspring between a palm tree and a cactus, with some disco and heavy radiation thrown into the mix. They're quite distinct, kind of funky and grow in similar sparsity as many cactii. But the park has a lot more to offer than a single tree (or even hundreds of trees of a single type). After the thick forests, granite cliffs and icy ground, the desert was a strange and wonderful place to find ourselves. In the distance were rocky outcrops girted by piles of rock and dirt - the remains of a weaker strata pummelled into submission by the elements (and also the Finsky gang, whom the weaker strata owed much money).

Another thing was the incredible stillness. When we first exited our car and stretched our legs for another episode of 'what's for lunch?' we were engulfed by a strange and powerful silence. There was no machinery, no animals, not even wind to disturb the whole lot of nothing that wasn't to be heard. It lasted maybe 20 seconds, at which point an Air Force jet blasted across the landscape.

After our lunch we went for a quick walk, admiring the diversity of life that manages to survive quite easily in the harsh conditions of the desert. Then B decided to go off-road, quite assured that we could walk all the way around, a large rock outcrop.

It turned out to be much bigger than expected so some short-cutting was required, navigating the boulders and rocky jungle with a vague idea of where we were going (there was a path for the first ten metres, but he quickly lost it and discovered a new 'path'). It was a lot of fun, and when we made it through the rock-jungle we found ourselves on a nature loop.

The nature loop was called the 'Secret Garden' - or something, I don't remember, and though a quick Google search will yield the correct name, I can't be bothered. What do you think of those apples, huh?
*It was the 'Hidden Valley' you git.*
Be quiet you! Get back into your cage.
Anyway, the Garden was a completely enclosed naturocosm, surrounded by much of the same rocky outrcrop/jungle we'd just clambered through. It held a rich diversity of life, with plant species that had evolved in a different manner to their outside cousins. It was, in a way, the garden of eden of the desert world. Until, that is, some guy decided to blast away some of the rock with lots of dynamite, effectively altering everything about its conditios that was unique. Cool walk though.

Before the sun went down we drove up to a big-arse lookout from which you can see Mexico. A large part of the land below was an old salt-lake gone dry, which had some small lakes, salt plains and towns doing all sorts of funky things. However the smog really drowns out a lot of the detail.
That evening we were subjected to one of the finest sunsets of our lives, as the landscape was bathed and silhouetted by purples and pinks. Being in the desert we could find no better way to spend our time than sitting around the campfire, cook up some chilli con carne, strum the guitar and knock back a few rounds of Jack Daniels.


The sunrise too was mighty impressive, but marred by the fact that it meant we had to get up and do the packing thing again. By this stage we had pretty much perfected our camping arrangements (actually, we had perfected it on day three, back in Yosemite, but that's neither here nor there - ok so it's actually here and there, considering it's documented here, and actually happened there but I can't think of any other expression than 'Rome wasn't built in a day' which probably won't fit either) Rome wasn't built in a day we had pretty much perfected our camping arrangements... (Nope, that's not going to work at all. Not only does it sound stupid, but also entirely inappropriate in this context considering I'm saying it was pretty much done in a day.) Anyway, the point is that the campsite and sunrise were beautiful, we slept well, and packing up was quick an easy.

We went a bit over an hour out of our way to go to the 'Oasis of Mara'. This place was great, I mean really great. Totally worth going to - absolutely really fantastically great-as-Miles-Davis-is-cool great and it didn't suck at all, not even a little bit, which can't even be said for a lot of really, really, really amazingly supercool-funky-chicken great things. We went mostly because it boasted that you could almost guarantee to see a tarantuala in the area, but also because it sounded nice. It turned out it was once nice, quite a while ago. It was a natural spring that attracted and supported much life - a veritable garden of eden in the desert (I know I've said that before, but this is the real deal. Mainly because of the water and the people and loincloths and -
Ok so neither of them were a veritable garden of eden. I mean, this one didn't even have a snake or an apple or Dinosaurs - actually it may have had dinosaurs - but it did have a lot of heart, and sometimes that's all that we need).
It was a special place for the native people as well, who would recurrently return here for parts of the year. It sounded really nice. So it's a bit of a pity that the colonials tapped that spring and ran it dry. All that's left there now is a bunch of palm trees, some short growth and a couple of birds, all surrounded by a thick concrete path. There weren't any tarantualas either.

Our final two stops were to embrace a photo op and check out a Teddybear Chollo forest, which was actually cool. Kind of cute but vicious little bastards. But you'll learn all about that soon.

Oh, and did we mention U2?